Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Ford CEO Jim Farley whines that government isn’t forcing people to buy electric vehicles

I’m starting to worry that I’m poaching too much on William Teach’s themes, with two previous articles in a week about plug in electric vehicles, but I spotted the following story this morning in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Ford CEO Jim Farley shares ‘shocking’ lesson he learned from Tesla

By Tony Owusu, TheStreet | Thursday, November 12, 2025 | 9:38 AM EST

Earlier this year, Ford CEO Jim Farley had a humbling experience in Asia.

The Detroit automaker has sunk billions into Model e, its electric vehicle division, for decades, with little to show for it.

In June, he told author Walter Isaacson during a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival that he made as many as seven trips to China over the past year.

“It’s the most humbling thing I have ever seen. Seventy percent of all EVs in the world, electric vehicles, are made in China,” Farley said. “They have far superior in-vehicle technology. Huawei and Xiaomi are in every car. You get in, you don’t have to pair your phone. Automatically, your whole digital life is mirrored in the car.”

Uhhh, maybe some of us would not see that as a great feature. A lot of people — I am not one of them — have their financial records on their phones, and pay some things with their too-smart phones. Perhaps some people wouldn’t want their cars to automatically “pair” with their phones, especially if it gives the car, and who knows how many other people, access to their lives and finances. With an estimated net worth of $72.9 million, perhaps Mr Farley is excited by every new gadget out there, and isn’t too terribly worried if someone pays for their Door Dash through Mr Farley’s accounts, but some of us poorer people do have to keep an eye on things.

The story continues to note how the CEO was impressed by superior technology and engineering, saying that Ford has to step up to compete, but then comes the money lines:

While Farley didn’t speak much about the builds of Ford’s Chinese rivals, he did praise the government for promoting the EV industry in a way the U.S. does not.

Farley said that “EVs are exploding in China” because the government there has put its “foot on the economic scale.”

In a Communist command economy, the government can put its “foot on the economic scale.” In a (mostly) free market in the United States, while there was some, thankfully expired, foot pushing in the form of government tax credits for buying electric vehicles and some states mandating that a certain percentage of new cars be EVs by 2030 to 2035, Americans exercising their free choices have not been so compliant. Toyota listened to what consumers wanted, and has focused on hybrids instead.

Perhaps it’s time that Mr Farley dumped his prejudices in favor of electric vehicles, and took a cold, hard look at what a free people taking free choices actually want.

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Amazing what can happen when manufacturers listen to what consumers want Electric cars nope; hybrids yup!

This site noted, just five days ago, that Ford Motor Company was considering doing away with its all-electric F-150 Lightning line of trucks, because the buyer demand for the vehicles just wasn’t there. Now there’s this, from The Wall Street Journal:

Toyota Doubles Down on Hybrids in the U.S. With $14-Billion Battery Push

New North Carolina plant is aimed at selling more hybrid cars and trucks to Americans

By Christopher Otts | Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | 1:28 PM EST

LIBERTY, N.C.—Toyota, a longtime hybrid car and truck promoter, is making one of the industry’s biggest bets on green transportation and opening a $14 billion battery plant here.

For years, Toyota held out against electric vehicles while rivals retrofitted factories and launched models in preparation for an all-electric future. Now that the EV market in the U.S. is vanishing as tax credits expire and sales disappoint, Toyota is doubling down on its hybrid strategy.

The Japanese automaker’s gamble: that American consumers—many of whom won’t touch an EV—will buy increasing numbers of hybrids, which often get up to 50% better mileage than a standard gas-powered car.

Toyota also said it would invest up to $10 billion in U.S. manufacturing over the next five years in addition to the North Carolina site, where it made the largest investment in a U.S. battery-production site.

The batteries that Toyota has begun making at the sprawling plant, located between the cities of Greensboro and Raleigh, are going into hybrids assembled in Kentucky and Alabama. The complex is designed to make batteries for EVs and hybrids, including those that plug in and travel short distances on just electricity before switching to gas.

Our family are familiar with hybrids, as our older daughter had a 2017 Toyota Prius Hybrid, and now drives a 2024 Prius Hybrid. It’s a good, solid vehicle, and she put a ton of miles on her first hybrid, as her civilian job took her on frequent trips throughout the eastern half of the country. She put nearly 200,000 miles on it, before trading it in.

The reason she traded it in was, of course, the battery. It was beginning to fail, and Toyota wanted $8000 to change it. That has always been the problem with the hybrids, and it’s something Toyota, and other hybrid manufacturers, need to address. I’d bet 25€ that all Toyota did was spend less than $2000 to swap out the battery to sell it used.

“For the longest time, folks were criticizing Toyota that they were so slow to the game in the battery-electric business,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive. But the strategy worked, he said. “They really did focus on the traditional hybrids, and they are dominating that whole product segment.”

In other words, Toyota’s leadership were smart enough not to listen to Joe Biden and the Democrats, who were pushing a technology and infrastructure that was simply not ready.

Toyota did listen, however, to consumers, to new automobile buyers, and the company’s actions reflect the free market, and the choices people take in a free country.

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right

My good friend and occasional blog pinch hitter William Teach noted that Luke Broadwater of The New York Times was apoplectic over the hardball that President Donald Trump played during the Government shutdown:

The government shutdown is already the longest in American history. But it’s also perhaps the most punishing, in part because President Trump has taken actions no previous administration ever took during a shutdown.

Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration cut food stamps for millions of low-income Americans. It tried to fire thousands of government workers and withhold back pay from others, while freezing or canceling money for projects in Democratic-led states. . . . .

But for now, the tactics appear to have worked, after a group of Democrats agreed to support a bill to end the shutdown and drop the concessions their party had demanded.

“Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work,” Senator Angus King, independent of Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, said on MSNBC Monday. “It actually gave him more power.”

We previously reported on how columnist Will Bunch and the liberal denizens of Bluesky were just spittle-flecking mad that the Democrats in the Senate finally caved agreed to end the filibuster, and allow the continuing resolution to fund the government come to a vote.

Well, it wasn’t just Mr Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer, but their Editorial Board as well:

Democrats caved on shutdown as Trump’s indifference to Americans suffering proved stronger | Editorial

The shutdown underscored clear policy differences between the two political parties: Trump and the Republicans do not care about everyday Americans.

by The Editorial Board | Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2025 | 5:01 AM EST

It is easy to say the Democrats blinked and got nothing in return for agreeing to end the historic government shutdown.

On its face, that is true. But Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who was one of the eight senators who caved, is wrong to claim the shutdown was a failure.

It’s a bit disingenuous to say that Senator Fetterman “caved,” given that he was a vote to end the filibuster the entire time. However, to my friends at the Inky, any Democrat who does not hate President Trump with a plasma-hot passion is a filthy traitor and despicable human being.

The Democrats were right to make a stand to preserve the Affordable Care Act subsidies to stave off steep increases in health insurance premiums. By refusing to negotiate, President Donald Trump and the Republicans under his thumb showed they do not care about average Americans.

Would it not be just as true that the filibustering Democrats were showing that they do not care about average Americans? Yes, they eventually gave up, but only after forty days and forty nights.

Trump remained unengaged throughout the longest government shutdown ever. Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) abdicated any leadership as he sent the Republican House members home.

LOL! The editorial writer assumes that it was abdication, but it was a smart move. The Speaker largely kept the Representatives out of it, having already done their part by passing and sending the continuing resolution to the Senate. President Trump “remained unengaged,” which gave strength to Senate Republicans to hold firm, and, of course, the President had other jobs to do at the time.

For more than 40 days, Americans were largely left on their own as the government remained closed. The pain rippled across the country, as more than 600,000 federal workers were furloughed, 42 million low-income Americans lost food assistance, and chaos ensued at airports.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain, “Senate Ends Filibuster; Democrats Immediately Form Circular Firing Squad“

The last link notes flight cancellations, but hardly describes “chaos.” As for 600,000+ federal workers being furloughed, that’s a good thing, because we have a roster of 600,000+ federal workers whose positions were not considered essential enough to require them to work on an emergency basis. If they were not essential to work for the past forty days, then their positions are not essential enough to retain at all. With hundreds of thousands, and perhaps two million illegal immigrants having left the country, and their jobs, there ought to be plenty of jobs available for the non-essential federal workers.

There’s a lot more at the original, and almost every paragraph is worthy of challenge, but the reader is supposed to believe that President Trump is an [insert slang term for the anus here], because he doesn’t want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on welfare. For those of us not on welfare, Mr Trump and the Republicans want to spend less of our taxpayer dollars on the less productive and the welfare malingerers. People who have worked hard all of their lives really do not like being taxed to support people who will not work.

Those of us who voted for Mr Trump knew he is an [insert slang term for the anus here], and, more importantly, we wanted him to be an [insert slang term for the anus here], because being all kind and sweetness and light is a very large part of what has gotten us into this mess in the first place.

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The death of the Lexington Herald-Leader?

I have written previously about the death of the Lexington Herald-Leader, a newspaper which is near and dear to my heart. I not only delivered the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in the late 1960s — yes, I’m that old! — but my sadly late best friend Ken Vermillion and I had several articles published in the paper in the mid 1970s. I noted the change in home delivery of the print edition to just three days a week, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, though the Sunday edition will be delivered on Saturday, by the United States Postal Service. Executive Editor and General Manager Richard A Green wrote, on May 31, 2024:

Beginning Aug. 5, we will transition to a 24/7 digital product with three days of high-quality, locally focused print editions a week.

Perhaps I have misunderstood what Mr Green meant, but I thought he was saying that the “24/7 digital product” would include the “high-quality, locally focused” product as well, not that the print editions would be the exclusively “high-quality, locally focused” publications.

I found this, first in my national feed, this morning:

Kentucky volleyball is just two wins away from total SEC perfection

Kentucky volleyball nears perfect SEC Season, eyes #1 NCAA seed

By Drew Holbrook | Monday, November 10, 2025

Craig Skinner doesn’t run from challenges, he hunts them. And once again, Kentucky Volleyball has answered the call.

Despite two early-season losses (both to ranked teams, including one to number 1 Nebraska), the Wildcats have run roughshod through the SEC, stacking ranked win after ranked win while climbing into the national top two. The schedule has been brutal. The response has been elite. Kentucky volleyball is nearing perfection.

You can follow the embedded link to read the rest of the story, but Kentucky has won all thirteen Southeastern Conference volleyball matches played, and has lost only seven sets in those thirteen matches. UK recently beat then #2 Texas 3-0, on the road. But you wouldn’t know it is your news source is the Herald-Leader! UK just beat #19 Tennessee 3-1, in Memorial Coliseum, a venue only a few miles from the newspaper’s offices

I informed Mr Green via a directly addressed tweet, something he should have seen anyway, since he follows me on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — as I had on November 5th, following the victory over Texas.

What Mr Vermillion used to call the Herald-Liberal maintains a specific UK Sports page on its website, which shows 24 stories as of 8:24 AM EST on Tuesday. Naturally, most are about the University’s football and men’s basketball teams, though there are a couple on women’s basketball, but somehow not a single story on a legitimate contender for the NCAA championship.

Perhaps this has something to do with yet further cutbacks at McClatchy, which owns the Lexington newspaper. Editor & Publisher reported on McClatchy’s “quiet cuts”:

On Monday (November 3, 2025) morning, staffers across McClatchy’s real-time news desk received an unexpected invitation to a hastily arranged Zoom meeting at noon. The calendar invite was vague, referring only in general terms to a restructuring update. The team wasn’t too taken aback by it; they knew change was coming. But they didn’t anticipate what awaited them when they logged on.

When the journalists on the nearly two dozen-strong team joined the call, they were hit with stunning news: McClatchy was eliminating the entire real-time news operation, which effectively operated as its national breaking news desk. The announcement left the team reeling. Their employment, they were told, would end on November 14.

Upon reading this, I checked to see if Mr Green was still the Editor and General Manager of the Herald-Leader, and he was still listed as such, at least as of the October 17, 2025 update to their About Us page.

The Columbia Journalism Review reported on staff cuts at McClatchy, as well as recent layoffs at CBS News, NBC News, Axios, and Teen Vogue, but the stress point of that story was the end of DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — and that many of the layoffs and job losses were among people who were not white males.

The newspaper did cover UK’s last volleyball NCAA championship, in 2020.

I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Herald-Leader, and for newspapers in general, because I much prefer to read the news than try to watch it on television. But if the Lexington newspaper, which has long specialized in UK sports, can’t cover a potential national championship team, I have to wonder just how much longer it can last. Newspapers cannot increase their sales by cutting back on the quantity and quality of their reporting.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Drug criminal released early under President Biden caught back to his old ways

Khyre Holbert, mugshot by Omaha Police Department, and is a public record.

Another one of the violent criminals released early by Biden White House staffers misusing the President’s autopen signature — no, no one will admit that it was one of the staffers, but I’d bet 20€ that’s what happened — has returned to his previous life, a life of violent crime, to the surprise of absolutely no one. From Fox News:

Felon freed by Biden arrested after shooting, raising fears of more ‘second chances’ gone wrong

Case highlights concerns over 2,490 inmates freed in Biden’s final clemency wave for drug and gun offenses

By Stepheny Price | Sunday, November 9, 2025 | 8:00 AM EST

A Nebraska felon whose prison sentence was reduced under a Biden administration clemency initiative is accused of possessing a gun linked to multiple crimes, intensifying scrutiny over whether reform efforts have come at the expense of public safety.

Federal prosecutors say 31-year-old Khyre Holbert, who had served roughly seven years of a 20-year federal sentence for gun and narcotics offenses, was arrested after an Oct. 4 shooting in Omaha’s Old Market district.

Investigators allege Holbert discarded a loaded handgun fitted with a high-capacity magazine as officers closed in, a weapon later tied to several other violent crimes across Nebraska.

Holbert’s sentence had been commuted in January 2025 despite objections from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which warned of his gang ties, long criminal record and prior weapons convictions. Months later, he’s accused of reoffending and his case has thrust former President Joe Biden’s clemency program back into the national spotlight.

This is where the Fox News headline is bad. “(S)econd chances”? Mr Holbert has a “long criminal record and prior weapons convictions,” so it would seem to me that “second chances” were far back in his rearview mirror.

I have said it before: we should allow leniency, some leniency to first-time offenders, in the hope that a reduced sentence and some probation might show them the error of their ways and give them a chance to straighten up and fly right. But second and subsequent offenses? Such criminals have clearly not learned to become civilized men, and should be sentenced to the maximum allowed under the law. At second and subsequent offenses, justice should be about protecting the public.

Mr Holbert (allegedly) discarded a gun following a shooting in a public place, a firearm with an extended magazine, and which was ballistically linked to other crimes. It would seem that Mr Holbert simply went back to the same group of bad guys he ran with seven years earlier.

The linked story continues to note other felons released under the autopen clemency program; Mr Holbert is not the only one who quickly returned to a life of crime.

For Michael Rushford, founder and president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, Holbert’s arrest is more than a tragedy. It’s a warning. . . . .

This is my morning coffee as I write this!

“You have to look and see if there was a real injustice in the case,” Rushford said. “With the Biden administration, I’m not sure that was done. The Justice Department under him was not really interested in fighting crime.”

The concern extends beyond Nebraska. In March 2025, authorities in Alabama arrested Willie Frank Peterson, another Biden clemency recipient, on new drug- and gun-related charges, just months after his release.

According to a federal complaint, Peterson, who had served more than a decade of a 20-year sentence, was caught with cocaine, meth and a loaded handgun. His sentence was also commuted in Biden’s Jan. 17, 2025 clemency wave, which freed 2,490 inmates, mostly for drug and gun offenses, according to the DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney.

Rushford said that by the time offenders reach federal prison, most have already exhausted their “second chances.”

Mr Rushford also questioned whether President Biden was really directly involved with the clemencies, implying what I stated directly, that I believe that many of the pardons and commutations were begun by young, #woke staffers, with little if any input from the doddering Delawarean. Mr Biden was, as a Senator before he began losing his marbles, involved in passing stricter sentences for drug dealers and traffickers.

Now what we have is an epidemic of crime by previously caught criminals, criminals released by judges — often with little choice — and criminals arrested but not prosecuted by criminal-loving and police-hating prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner. The time has come, the time has long passed, when we need to protect the decent, law-abiding people in our society rather than give the bad guys uncountable second chances. Remember: the criminal who is in jail is not out on the streets committing more crimes.

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I check Bluesky so you don’t have to! Will Bunch waxes wroth that the Democrats have (supposedly) agreed to allow a Senate vote to reopen the government.

The leadership of Hamas kept the futile, and worse than futile, war they started going for two long years, when they had clearly lost in the first few months. They played their only point of leverage, the hostages, for two years, until only twenty were left alive, and multiple thousands of the ‘Palestinians’ they claimed to want to liberate were killed. They lost and lost and lost, and now, with somewhere around a hundred or so Hamas terrorists huddling in one of their reinforced tunnels, with no way out, and no way to get supplies in, they face the choice of starvation or surrender, yet are bravely and boldly resisting emerging and surrendering their weapons.

And so we come to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s hard-left columnist Will Bunch, who hates President Trump with a white-hot passion, and is thoroughly consumed by #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, essentially doing the same thing. Oh, nobody is in danger of starving to death like the Hamas rats in the tunnel, due to the government shutdown, but our good friends on the left keep telling us that they will. Now, with an agreement in which the filibustering Senate Democrats finally allow the continuing resolution to come to a vote, and reopen the government, the columnist waxed wroth on Bluesky, skeeting:

Instead of No Kings, I hope the next protest is No Caves that gets 7 million people to surround their offices

Primary every one. No $$$ for them or any committee that funds them. Boo them in airports. Make their existence hell on earth

Hey, I sort of agree: keep SNAP shut down, do not fund Obaminablecare, do everything possible to reduce welfare as much as possible. I’d like to see TSA back to work fully, because my wife and daughters have a pre-Christmas trip to London planned, and I’d hate to see that be a problem, but better that our family ‘suffer’ in that way than we pay out more in welfare and food stamps.

At least as of this writing. 8:30 PM EST, Mr Bunch has not included the same thing on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — but he’s mostly abandoned his Twitter account, preferring the mostly liberal echo chamber to a site where more people will challenge him. I did challenge him on Bluesky, but I’m sure I’ll be one of only few who will.

I will admit to picturing the distinguished columnist typing away in anger at his spittle-flecked keyboard. 🙂

Of course, it’s easy for Mr Bunch to want to continue the shutdown. A long-time columnist for the newspaper, he is doubtlessly paid enough that he doesn’t rely on SNAP to put food on the table, and he was able to help his son Jesse Bunch get a coveted job at the Inquirer. His health care coverage is surely not through Obysmalcare, but the newspaper by which he is employed. If the shutdown continues, Mr Bunch and his son won’t be among those feeling the pain. The most vocal leftists are like that.

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Poor, poor #Hamas terrorists, trapped in their own tunnels I can't put into words just how sorry I feel for them!

These aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Wall Street Journal:

Hundreds of Hamas Fighters Are Stuck in Tunnels in Israeli-Controlled Gaza

The presence of the militants, who have killed three Israeli troops, is threatening to unravel the cease-fire

By Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv, and Summer Said in Dubai | Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 5:43 AM EST

A detachment of Israeli engineering troops was demolishing tunnels behind the withdrawal line in Gaza last month when Hamas militants sprang from a hidden shaft, fired an antitank missile toward their excavator and killed two soldiers.

A little over a week earlier, Israel and Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire. Israel responded to the deadly encounter with a round of airstrikes on Gaza that killed dozens of people.

The early test of the fragile truce pointed to a bigger problem: Hundreds of armed Hamas fighters are trapped in tunnels under the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza, and willing to take shots at Israel.

The situation is the result of Israeli efforts that began in May to flush out militants and destroy Hamas’s extensive tunnel system where the group has hidden fighters, hostages and weapons throughout the conflict. The strategy was to cut off sections of the underground web from one another. But Israel’s partial withdrawal under the U.S.-brokered cease-fire last month has left militants who remain behind the line trapped underground with no means of escape and dwindling supplies.

Don’t read that last sentence wrong. It does not mean that the Hamas fighters cannot get out of the tunnels; it means that they have no means of leaving and escaping capture by the Israel defense Force.

While Arab and Israeli guesstimates put the number of trapped Hamas fighters at between 200 to 300, Hamas negotiators claim that the number is closer to 100, and Hamas want the IDF to grant the fighters safe passage to ‘Palestinian’ controlled areas. Israel, on the other hand, wants them to surrender and be disarmed, or to kill them. But Israel doesn’t really have to do anything; if the terrorists don’t come out and surrender, they’ll eventually die of thirst or starvation. The IDF could simply seal them in, or flood the tunnels with sea water, but it’s simpler to just wait them out and let the Lord decide their fate.

According to the Kenya Times early Sunday morning, the IDF have already “eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists and dismantled hundreds of the group’s infrastructure sites in the Khan Yunis area of Gaza over the past two months.”

The IDF also said the operatives are commanded by a Hamas deputy battalion commander from Rafah and that mediating countries have been able to communicate with the Hamas operatives, according to the military.

In recent days, IDF troops killed several Hamas terrorists attempting to cross the Yellow Line, the boundary separating ceasefire zones between Hamas- and IDF-controlled areas.

It’s simple: with the last remaining living hostages released, Hamas have no leverage at all. By any Western civilization logic, the trapped terrorists should surrender, surrender their weapons, and have a realistic hope that they’ll be allowed to rejoin their comrades on the other side of the ‘Yellow line.’ If they’re determined to keep killing Jews, they can at least hope that they could get back to that in a few years.

But Hamas’ logic, if we can stretch the meaning of the word, is that it’s better to hold out, and the trapped terrorists starve to death. I would guess that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is just fine with that. I just can’t seem to put into words just how sorry I feel for them.

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Ford might trash the entire F-150 Lightning electric vehicle model line

It seems that the electric vehicle mandates of the Biden Administration were not greeted with approval by the public, and the public are not choosing to buy the silly things without Federal government bribery. From The Wall Street Journal:

Ford Considers Scrapping Electric Version of F-150 Truck

Once hyped as a ‘smartphone that can tow,’ production of the money-losing EV pickup may be shut down for good

2022 F-150 charging in a lot nicer garage than I have. It shows you just how much money you have to have to buy one of the fool things. Photo from a Ford sales site. Click to enlarge.


By Sharon Terlep | Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 4:06 PM EST

Ford Motor executives are in active discussions about scrapping the electric version of its F-150 pickup, according to people familiar with the matter, which would make the money-losing truck America’s first major EV casualty.

The Lightning, once described by Ford as a modern Model T for its importance to the company, fell far short of expectations as American truck buyers skipped the electric version of the top-selling truck. Ford has racked up $13 billion in EV losses since 2023.

Overall EV sales, already falling short of expectations, are expected to plummet in the absence of government support. And big, electric pickups and SUVs are the most vulnerable.

If you are blocked by the Journal’s paywall, you can read more about it in The Detroit News.

“The demand is just not there” for F-150 Lightning and other full-size trucks, said Adam Kraushaar, owner of Lester Glenn Auto Group in New Jersey. He sells Ford, GMC, Chevy and other brands. “We don’t order a lot of them because we don’t sell them.”

No final decision has yet been made, according to people familiar with the discussions, but such a move by Ford could be the beginning of the end for big EV trucks.

Using the back of my truck as a workbench. Would I ever do this with a $70,000+ truck?

The decision has been taken, taken already, but not by Ford executives; the decision was taken by the men who buy trucks!

I actually could do OK with an F-150 Lightning. I’m retired, and live and work on a small farm. My average mileage has greatly decreased since retirement, and I have a full shop, with 200 amp separate electric service, in which I could easily mount a vehicle charger. I ought to be the ideal customer, but I would never, ever buy that overpriced piece of [insert vulgar slang for feces here].

I already own an F-150, a 2010, which does just fine. It’s kind of beat up looking, because it’s actually a work truck, and it has some obvious rust thanks to Pennsylvania winters and road salt. Why would I throw away my money on a shiny, new truck at which I would be appalled to throw wood or brush or lumber in the back? The Lightning would be fine for people who haul nothing but groceries and beer, but for men who buy trucks because they use trucks for work, nope, sorry, wrong answer.

Ram truck-maker Stellantis earlier this year called off plans to make an electric version of its full-size pickup. General Motors executives have discussed discontinuing some electric trucks, according to people familiar with the matter. Sales of Tesla’s angular, stainless steel Cybertruck pickup tanked this year. And EV truck-maker Rivian has been cutting jobs to conserve cash.

Here’s the real kicker:

Ford already paused production of its F-150 Lightning—the bestselling electric pickup in the U.S.—last month amid an aluminum shortage. The company is weighing whether to keep that plant idle as it shifts to smaller, more affordable EVs, the people say. The company said it would restart production “at the right time.”

In October, the first month since the end of the federal EV tax credit, Ford’s overall EV sales in the U.S. fell 24% from a year earlier. Ford dealers sold 66,000 gas-powered F-Series pickups, up a tick from a year earlier, and just 1,500 Lightnings, the fewest of any model.

Translation: even the people who did buy them were influenced by the bribes offered by the federal government. Every American taxpayer was being charged a little bit to provide some welfare for the well-to-do, the only people who could afford to buy brand new F-150s.

We’ve seen this before. In April of 2010, when I bought my current vehicle, the Feds were offering the so-called “cash for clunkers” program. The 2000 F-150 I traded in, at, if I remember correctly, 189,000 miles, qualified for the first part, but the new F-150 didn’t for the second. Yeah, I was able to afford to buy a new vehicle, but the new vehicle I needed got less than necessary miles per gallon rating. Cash for clunkers was yet another bit of welfare for the well-to-do, a program which was supposed to aid in recession recovery, but in 2010, the only people who could afford to buy new vehicles didn’t need the government assistance.

So, without a government program bribing people to buy electric vehicles, and without the federal government mandate requiring a certain percentage of new vehicles sold to be EVs, the public are simply not buying EVs at a rate which can sustain production of them.

Remember one thing: the left are pro-choice on exactly one thing!

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I check Bluesky so you don’t have to! Teen Voguer bemoans losing his job writing hard left politics for an online magazine supposedly focused on teen fashion and beauty.

Lex McMenamin (they/them) describes himself[1]As our Stylebook specifies, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in … Continue reading in his Bluesky biography as:

permanent Philadelphian in NYC, opinions mine
WAS politics @teenvogue.com
member @transjournalists.org
@leximcmenamin elsewhere
linktr.ee/leximcmenamin

As you can see, Mr McMenamin, who puts plural pronouns in his signature line on Bluesky, is going to be a flaming liberal, as the list of his online articles shows. Alas! she skeeted today:

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

I admit to being almost totally unfamiliar with Teen Vogue. What little I do know comes from Robert Stacy McCain, who has mentioned the magazine’s normally silly political articles several times. See this and this — noting how Teen Vogue was ceasing print publication — and this. But it has to be asked: why did an online magazine supposedly concerned with fashion and beauty for teenaged girls need “political staffers”?

I dislike the fact that anyone, other than illegal immigrants in our country, has lost his job, and certainly do not celebrate a “permanent Philadelphian” losing his, but Condé Nast ceased print publication of Teen Vogue because it wasn’t making money, despite, somehow, the magazine’s turn to the political left.

However, it isn’t only Mr McMenamin who has lost his job:

Teen Vogue Will Fold Into Vogue.com

By Danya Issawi | Monday, November 3, 2025 | 2:23 PM EST

One of the last remaining publications dedicated to teens and young adults is undergoing a transformation. Today, Condé Nast announced that Teen Vogue will now live at Vogue.com and that the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Versha Sharma, will be stepping down. Chloe Malle, Vogue’s new head of editorial content, will oversee the publication in Sharma’s place. The move follows last week’s news that Vogue Business will officially move under the Vogue.com umbrella as well.

According to the announcement, Teen Vogue will remain “a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission.” The magazine had already ceased printing, releasing a final print issue with Hillary Clinton on the cover in December 2017 before becoming a digital-only publication. During that time, and continuing under Sharma’s direction, the outlet had shifted its focus toward discussing politics and human rights head on, laying a strong stake in the media landscape as a reliable place for young people to seek out sociopolitical coverage. From interviewing Zohran Mamdani on the campaign trail to catching up with Greta Thunberg fresh out of her detention in an Israeli prison to breaking down the lessons that Black Lives Matter taught protestors, Teen Vogue has been considered a platform for young progressives inside the glossy confines of Condé Nast. The company’s announcement makes no explicit mention of the future of the outlet’s political coverage.

It doesn’t take much to see that that last paragraph was written with a leftist bias! But no leftist bias can cover for the fact that Teen Vogue is being subsumed into Vogue, and this move is very similar to others in the credentialed media: they have to cut costs because profits are increasingly scarce.

As for Mr McMenamin and Miss Sharma? It’s not great that they have lost their jobs, and new jobs in the media are tough to find. Some of my friends would retort, “Learn to code,” after the “advice” given to blue-collar workers being laid off — though The New Republic says it’s an evil reich wing meme — but I would say something different: learn to drive a truck! There will be a lot of jobs opening up soon!

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↑1 As our Stylebook specifies, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in cases in which the sex of the person to whom a pronoun refers is unknown, the masculine is properly used, and does not indicate that that person is male, nor is it biased in favor of such an assumption. We are uncertain as to Mr McMenamin’s actual sex, his biological sex, and thus use the masculine pronouns throughout.